New data out from Credit Suisse points to some of the salutary effects of high-frequency trading. Researchers at the Swiss bank’s New York offices posit that HFT activity has helped inoculate large-caps from the effects of macroeconomic market stresses.

Their analysis, in a note released Wednesday, shows price volatility is much more subdued in the stocks of companies with large market capitalizations—whose deeper liquidity HFT generally prefers—than it is in their small-cap peers.

Looking at stocks that moved at least 1% within one minute, researchers found spikes in small-caps at moments of instability, like the 2011 U.S. debt downgrade. But in large-caps, there wasn’t a blip.

The data, which stretched back to 2000, examined large-caps in the S&P 500 and small-caps in the Russell 2000, and it didn’t include the more-frenetic opening and closing 30 minutes of trading.

Average number of times a stock gaps by 1% within 1 minute (10am – 3:30pm)

As Credit Suisse put it: “The numbers have been declining consistently every year post-crisis, as HFT has become a larger part of the market. Not so for smallcaps.”

The upshot for investors is that they can more easily focus on stock-specific factors for large-caps, with less worry about bets being upended by earth-shaking news. Of course, this security doesn’t come free—HFT wouldn’t traffic in the large-caps if there wasn’t a margin in it for them. Choose your poison.